Thirty-something years ago, when I was serving as deacon down the road at Saint Malachy’s, the so-called “Actors’ Chapel” (so-called because of its historic ministry to the theater-district), I vividly remember how, after the Saturday afternoon matinee, a crowd would gather outside the theater across the street to get a glimpse of some actor or actress in the cast. More or less, that is how I imagine the scene in today’s Gospel, when some Greeks came to Philip and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” They approached Philip, because being from Bethsaida in Galilee, he presumably could converse comfortably with them in Greek. Mindful of his place in the group’s hierarchy, however, Philip went and told Andrew, Peter’s brother. Then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
Now, you might think that after all this we might hear more about those Greeks and their meeting with Jesus. John never mentions them again, however. We never even hear whether or not they actually got to meet Jesus. We may presume that, along with Andrew and Philip and probably the rest of the crowd, they at least got to hear him – to hear him speak about how the hour had come for the Son of Man to be glorified, and hear him pray “Father, glorify your name,” the prayer of a faithful Son, full of confidence in his Father’s response. In fact, assuming they hung around long enough, they would also have heard the Father’s answer, when a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”
Of course, the crowd there disagreed – as many people then did and many people still do (and do a lot) – about Jesus. And, so, some said, “An Angel has spoken to him,” but others just thought it was thunder. Just thunder.
Who and what Jesus is – the Son of the living God, or a long-dead historical curiosity, a passing fad that came and went with all the permanence of the last thunderstorm – is also at the heart of who and what WE are, here and now.
Conditioned as we all are by our contemporary visual media and by photo and film records of recent historical figures and events, it would be only natural that we too would like to have seen Jesus. Obviously, such access to the past is not possible. The only Jesus we can have any actual access to in the present is the Risen Christ, the living Son of God, sitting at the Father’s right hand, who intercedes forever on our behalf. Like the Greeks, who, for their access to Jesus, went to Philip and Andrew (in other words, to those appointed as Apostles), our access to Jesus, our encounter with Christ, is through the Church, which continues his life and mission in the world.
We, who are here today, we encounter Christ through our experience of being his Church – not just what happens here on Sunday, but in a very special way what happens here on Sunday, which in turn further forms us as Church for the rest of the week and indeed the rest of life. At every Mass every day before the Sign of Peace, we pray Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church. The Church is that whole host of the faithful both living and dead who sustain us in faith, in hope, and in love, a Communion of Saints that unites us here and now with the faithful all over the world and back through time with those who have shown Christ to the world in the past. That is why the saints are so important for us. – like, for example, our city’s patron, Saint Patrick, who died on this date over 1500 years ago after having extended the Church’s reach even beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.
What this also means is that (again like the Greeks in the Gospel) the rest of the world – the pagan world then, the secular world now – also encounters Christ primarily through its experience of his Church, which is to say, its experience of us. Indeed, as has often been said, the Church is essentially the only experience of Christ most people will ever have in life – the face of Christ that they see, the word of God that they hear. So (and this is the problematic part) if in any way our behavior conceals rather than reveals the face of Christ, then the word of God may seem silent – precisely when and where it may most need to be proclaimed – and the love of God may appear absent from the very world Christ became part of, precisely in order to save it.
We hear many stories about sons in the Bible – from Cain and Abel on – bad sons, good sons, jealous sons, prodigal sons, and faithful obedient sons. In Jesus, we see the ultimately good and faithful Son, God’s Son, whose perfect obedience is the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
In that, he is everything there is to be. Revealed in and through his Church, he is everything anyone ever needs to hear or see.
All the more reason then, to make sure he is heard and seen in and through us!
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, March 17, 2024.
Photo: Lent 2024 at Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.
